Multiple studies indicate strong association between rare variants and
resulting phenotype. This paper describes a population-genetics
simulation framework to study the influence of variant allele
frequency on the corresponding phenotype. In a prior study, causal
relationship between variants and phenotype was resolved by performing
association test on set of variants having allele frequency below a
fixed threshold. However, here it is observed that simulation
frameworks based on a variable allele frequency threshold provide
higher accuracy in association test compared to the fixed allele
frequency model. In addition, inclusion of predicted functional
effects of variants (Polyphen-2 scores) increases the accuracy of the
variable frequency threshold model. Overall, this paper describes a novel methodology, which can be
used to explore the association between rare variants and various
diseases.